In the heart of Shakespeare country last weekend, it was retreat time. This was the second Developing Your Novel retreat I’ve led with my writing mate and awesome tutor, Alison May. What a great weekend it was, sharing experiences and knowledge and ideas about writing with a group of like-minded folks. There was a certain…
This week I spent a lovely evening as a guest of She Voices – a group of women writers based in Richmond, in London. We gathered at the Tea Box for an evening of music and words with an added layer of cake, tea (and wine) and fellowship. I was struck by how important evenings…
There’s been a bit of excitement in my house this week…. and a very warm and fuzzy feeling for the US state of Colorado. The reason – The Wild One is a finalist in the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence. Excellence! What a truly… um… excellent word that is. I’m having a bit of…
My New Year’s resolution involving reading for 2016 was two-fold – to alternate between reading a physical book and reading on my Kindle thus hoping to clear BOTH To Be Read piles; and at least one book in two has to be an author I’ve not read before. I need to / want to find…
Writing is a fairly solitary occupation – well, depending on your definition of solitary. I do spend a lot of time sitting at my desk talking to imaginary people in my head. When I put it like that, it does sound a bit strange – but you know what I mean (I hope). But this…
This week saw the annual Romantic Novelist Association Awards – the RoNAS. It’s THE event of the year for a lot of us. A time when the RNA honours the best of the best. As always, I was one of the workers… which means I was so frantically busy, I didn’t get to talk to…
It seems only fitting that on Valentine’s Day, I should do a blog devoted to Romance – ah, but not just any romance. This is all about my love affair with books – specifically books about relationships and love, because after all our relationships with other people are the most important part of our lives.…
I remember as a child being chastised by my teachers for using made up words. If it wasn’t a ‘real’ word, I wasn’t allowed to use it in my school work. To be fair, those teachers were trying to give me the kind of education that would allow me to make a living when I…